March 2009

We are now rolling out Spotify 0.3.12 with the long-awaited fix for scrobbling on Mac and scrambling of proxy passwords. As mentioned earlier we have also included more download links and a Spanish translation as well as a fix for some character encoding problems.

There are a couple of neat new features to tell you about today. We’ve been experimenting with a download feature where users could purchase tracks for a while now but the number of songs available has been very limited. Now we’re expanding the “Buy From” feature to offer you the option to download a huge number of tracks and albums that are in Spotify. We’ve partnered with 7digital to offer you this service and initially downloads are only available in the UK, France and Spain. We plan to expand this service to other countries in the near future.

To purchase albums or tracks right click on the track name (control click in Mac OS) and you’ll see the “Buy From” menu item. If the track or album is available for purchase there will be a link to the 7Digital store where you can download the mp3.

Additionally we’ve added a Spanish translation of Spotify for our users in Spain. This is our first time expanding the range of languages that Spotify offers so let us know what you think about the feature. To change the language go to the preferences menu and save the new settings.

To make the weekend a little more interesting we have another update to the Spotify music catalogue. Today we’ve added 877 albums and singles, for a total of more than 13,000 new tracks.

Some of the notable additions include most of the back catalogue from the Beastie Boys including the special 20th anniversary edition of Paul’s Boutique. Also added is a huge selection of Greatful Dead live concerts from the Dick’s Picks collection for all those Deadheads out there.

For a full listing of today’s additions please have a look at the Google Doc, I’ve also added a second sheet to the document which is sorted by label rather than artist. As with every update not all albums listed may be available in your country due to regional restrictions.

It’s Wednesday, the work week is half over and to help you get through the rest of the week we’ve got another update of our music catalogue. Today we’ve added more than 2,850 albums and singles, in total over 37,000 new tracks are now available. This release includes albums such as Cherry Peel, part of the back catalogue from Of Montreal.

For a full listing of today’s additions please have a look at the Google Doc. As with every update not all albums listed may be available in your country due to regional restrictions.

March 25th is the International day of Remembrance of the Victims of Slavery and the Transatlantic Slave Trade. In support of this, the UN is also hosting a cultural evening and concert in New York later tonight with the likes of Alicia Keys and Muhammed Ali in attendance. Additionally, to commemorate the day Akon and Peter Buffett have teamed up and recorded a new song, Blood Into Gold, pinpointing the issue of human trafficking and slavery.

You can listen to the song exclusively on Spotify in Europe and we encourage listeners who are interested in more information to visit the official site where you can download the song and view the video. Please visit http://istheresomethingicando.com/ for more information.

We’ve previously covered some of the advanced searches that you can do in Spotify to quickly find your favorite music. Searching by genre, such as “genre:soul“, is very popular but a lot of people are unaware of what genres they can search for.

To help you get more out of your searches we’ve put together a list of all the genres in Spotify. Some of the genres contain two words in which case you need to add quotation marks to the search for it to work properly. For example to find Appalachian Folk music you need to search for “genre:”Appalachian Folk”“.

Have a look at this Google Doc to see all 944 genres listed. Not all of them may be available since we may not have all genres of music yet but you should be able to find the majority of them.

Today we have another update to the Spotify music catalogue. We’ve added just over 5,200 albums and singles, in total over 72,000 new tracks were added. This update has some interesting additions for video game fans, we’ve added a number of soundtracks from EA Recordings like Sim City 4 and Command & Conquer.

Additionally the latest Röyksopp album, Junior, is also now available for pre-release for Spotify Premium users in Norway. Röyksopp has also put together their own playlist of their favorite tunes that they wanted us to share with you, so check it out.

For a full listing of today’s additions please have a look at the Google Doc. As with every update not all albums listed may be available in your country due to regional restrictions.

We have another video in our new series of how to get the most out of Spotify. This time we’ve started off at the beginning and are showing the signup and install process for Mac OS X users. We try and keep the videos to under one minute which can be quite a challenge for some demos. If anyone can come up with a similar video for Windows installation in under one minute we’d love to see and would post in on the blog.

Along with this video our good friends over at Bredbandsbolaget made a series of instructional videos on how to use Spotify. They’re quite good so if you want to have a look at them head on over to their website.

HammerFall, the Swedish metal band, is currently touring to promote their latest release, No Sacrifice, No Victory. For Spotify Premium users in Sweden we have one pair of tickets to their concert in Gothenburg on March 27th and one pair of tickets for the concert in Stockholm on March 29th.

If you’re interested in winning the tickets leave a comment on the blog and let us know which city you’d like to see them in. We’ll pick the winners next Wednesday and notify them by email.